Anhang

Guest post

Short biography Dr Manja Klemenčič (for german translation see Abschnitt 1)

Dr Manja Klemenčič researches, teaches, and advises in studies of higher education at Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and acts as a consultant on higher education policies and strategies. She has over 150 publications and over 80 keynotes and invited lectures on a broad array of higher education topics, including institutional research and quality assurance, internationalization, and different aspects of higher education reforms. She regularly serves as a consultant for the European Commission and other international organizations, governments, quality assurance agencies and universities. Klemenčič is Editor and Co-Editor of various journals and publications and won Harvard’s awards for teaching excellence for all her courses offered at Harvard. Five times, she was voted by the Harvard Yearbook Publications one of the most impactful professors by the graduating class (’19, ’20, ’21, ’22, ‘23). 

Steering higher education in Austria: Balancing institutional autonomy with societal challenges and developmental needs

The University Report prepared by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research is a commendable publication. It combines stocktaking on the Austrian higher education system’s performance over the past three years and reflects on its readiness for the future in view of internal and external developments that influence the system. The report depicts a well-developed higher education sector with a strong tradition of academic excellence and commitment to accessible higher education. It points to the challenges and developments, from global issues- such as the war in Ukraine, COVID-19 pandemic, rising inflation, climate change, weakening trust in science and democracy - to local issues (such as demographic changes and labor market demands), all of which add increasing demands on the higher education sector to address them. The fast pace of changes in the global and local environment in which higher education institutions are embedded raises the question of how to ensure that the higher education sector best serves the society and its increasing demands. And this opens another question: How should higher education be governed, and specifically, how (and how much) the should government steer the behavior of and within higher education institutions to ensure that they contribute to the national and regional (state) objectives? Steering, here, refers to “the guidance and governance mechanisms used by state or regional authorities to shape the direction, priorities, and performance of higher education institutions”. (M. Klemenčič - ChatGPT, personal communication, September 25, 2023)

In the last thirty years, higher education systems in Europe have undergone significant governance reforms. They were influenced by two overarching reform processes (Jungblut & Dobbins, 2023): for one, they emerged as “a side effect” of the Bologna Process reforms (Dobbins & Knill, 2014), and secondly, they were instigated by New Public Management (NPM) approaches adopted across public sector institutions (Paradeise et al., 2009). While governance reforms across European countries differ significantly due to preexisting institutional legacies, values and traditions, a common trend has been towards reducing direct government control over higher education institutions while strengthening accountability measures. A common trend across Europe has been the rise of the “evaluative state” (Neave, 1998) with more consolidated and strengthened quality assurance measures for higher education institutions and more rigorous performance assessments of entire higher education systems. This trend is visible in the reforms of the Austrian higher education governance.

The Austrian higher education governance model can be categorized as a “hybrid governance model” with more restrained policy instruments and limited reforms towards managerial, competition-oriented approaches. This model is typical for the countries characterized by the Humboldtian tradition of academic self-governance, a robust (neo)corporatist model of state-society relations with active involvement of stakeholder associations in higher education policy processes (in case of Austria, the HSK and ÖH), and a continuously strong administrative law tradition in public administration. The bureaucratic culture of public administration is deeply rooted in the Austrian past and continues to be reflected in the governance structures and process of higher education, albeit to a different extent in different higher education subsectors and higher education institutions. As a federation of states (Bundesländer), the multilevel governance of higher education adds another layer of complexity to the division of authority over decisions on higher education.

The higher education sector in Austria is steered through a combination of instruments: (1) higher education legislation, (2) national development plans for higher education and research, (3) quality assurance and accreditation, and higher education system monitoring measures, (4) performance agreements, performance-based funding and competitive research funding, (5) direct funding of new institutions of strategic interest, and (6) a national conference on higher education. 

Ad (1): In terms of higher education legislation, the University Act of 1993 and of 2002 both increased institutional autonomy of universities while enforcing stronger accountability measures. Notably, the University Act of 2002 introduced university boards in the institutional governance of universities, with members jointly appointed by the Ministry and the academic senates; these boards appoint rectors rather than rectors being elected by internal constituencies. The law also afforded public higher education institutions the status of public corporations. 

Ad (2): The Austrian Higher Education Plan 2023 is an important novelty as a steering tool. It provides a comprehensive strategy for coordinated development of all four sectors of the Austrian higher education area. It serves as a foundation for the development plans for universities and universities of applied sciences and other strategic documents on specific policy objectives, and it aligns with the RTI Strategy 2030. While the timeframe of the plan is relatively long (7 years), it offers unequivocal commitments to important objectives, such as teaching and research in the context of societal challenges, including digital and green transformations which allow for the drafting of more specific strategic plans. 

Ad (3): Continuous reforms of the quality assurance and accreditation system have strengthened and upgraded the quality assurance system in Austria. Austria has a highly advanced system of monitoring the performance of the higher education system and higher education institutions (“Wissenbilanz”). It is based on a unified data collection tool on key performance indicators, and the collected data feeds into the open-access unidata portal. This data is used in performance reports, as evidence for reviewing implementation of performance agreements, and can be used for institutional research more broadly. What is evaluated through quality assurance and what is measured in the form of the key performance indicators through national data collection has an important steering effect on higher education institutions.

Ad (4): Performance agreements constitute a central steering mechanism for public universities, and are negotiated every three years between these institutions and the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. The general outlines of these agreements are based on the Austrian National Development Plan for Public Universities (GUEP). The performance agreements inform the development plans of the higher education institutions and determine the resources required to reach the development goals. The influence of performance agreements is reinforced through the indicator-driven performance-based funding system which is ‘capacity-oriented and student-related’ (BMBWF, 2018). Funding is tied to the institutional results on basic and competitive performance indicators. Competitive indicators are assessed at regular intervals across mutually agreed upon targets. This arrangement enables considerable governmental steering. However, the share of the funding for infrastructure and special initiatives is relatively small, posing doubts about sufficient incentives for higher education institutions to innovate. The availability of national competitive research funding, too, is relatively low in Austria compared to the European countries with highest availability of competitive research funding (e. g. the Netherlands). This situation points to limitations of funding for special initiatives and infrastructure and competitive research funding as steering tools to meet national (or regional) priorities compared to the influence of European Union funding (Janger et al., 2019). 

Ad (5): The new Institute of Digital Sciences Austria, founded on the basis of a federal act and funded jointly by the Austrian Federal government and the province of Upper Austria is an exemplary model of governmental steering towards significant transformation in the higher education sector to contribute longterm to national strategic priorities. This pioneering university demonstrates all characteristics of an innovative and future-oriented university; while respecting the Austrian values of accessible higher education and contributing to regional cohesion in Austria. Since collaboration with other Austrian higher education institutions is at the core of the mission, it can be expected that the Institute of Digital Sciences Austria will inspire both organizational and content reforms also in its partner institutions, thus complementing and contributing to the development of the entire Austrian science and innovation system. 

Ad (6): The Austrian Higher Education Conference (Hochschulkonferenz (HSK)) is an important steering body bringing together the representatives of the Ministry and higher education stakeholder associations. The growing societal challenges and demands on higher education call for more of a ‘policy network’ type of governance to strengthen capabilities to plan for and address complex challenges and enable exchange of ideas and mutual learning. HSK depicts government steering based on creating a platform and facilitating voluntary collaboration between higher education stakeholders to jointly define higher education policy goals and strategies to jointly realize them.

In conclusion, the contemporary challenges and rapid developments - such as the spread of education technology and the introduction of AI into higher education - require reconsideration of the existing models of higher education governance and governmental steering of the higher education sector. The government should have levers to incentivise and support higher education institutions to develop new research, teaching, and service initiatives within a span of a few months of new societal challenges or opportunities arising. Similarly the higher education institutions should have the possibility to compete for funding for ‘strategic initiatives’ to innovate for groundbreaking ideas of societal relevance. 

Goal-oriented policy-network governance within crisis management during COVID-19 pandemic offers important lessons on how to jointly build flexibility and agility in the sector to respond to the ongoing and emerging challenges. It would be important to consider whether some of the practices from crisis-management during the COVID-19 pandemic could be adopted to e. g. address emerging challenges, such as the use of AI in higher education specifically and the development of education technology more broadly.

Furthermore, the steering tools applied by the ministry, e. g. performance contracts and funding agreements, need to be adopted to higher education institutions as increasingly ‘networked institutions’. The reality is that many Austrian higher education institutions already operate as members of the European University alliances whereby their structural features are transforming into joined networked structures. Or, as in the case of the Institute of Digital Sciences Austria, higher education institutions’ developmental plans are to operate like hubs with deep, multilayered partnerships with institutions across sectors. Such endeavors are to be encouraged and supported by the government, and accounted for in the performance indicators and quality assurance standards.

Reporting requirements and data collection systems need to be reviewed regularly and with the full involvement of the stakeholders. This is not only to ensure the relevance of the indicators, but also to determine whether the reporting and institutional research processes reinforce a more professional, more entrepreneurial culture of higher education administration or maintain its more bureaucratic orientations. 

Finally, the Austrian higher education sector reflects the achievements of Austria as one of the countries with the highest standard of living, highest quality of living, with high social progress, and cultural richness. The sector has contributed to the highly educated Austrian population and highly skilled labor force. To keep up with the fast pace of developments globally, the Austrian higher education sector has to pay attention to its capabilities to innovate and support innovation in other sectors, its overall agility, its capabilities for cultural influence and for branding the sector at home and abroad.

Universitäten (alphabetisch)

Bundesministerien (alphabetisch)

Fächergruppen gem. UniFinV

Fächergruppe 1 (Basisausstattung des Bedarfs in Forschung bzw. Entwicklung und Erschließung der Künste und Lehre (Geisteswissenschaften, Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Rechtswissenschaften – GeWi, SoWi, ReWi, etc.),

Fächergruppe 2 (Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaften und Technik (MINT) in Basisausstattung (Mathematik, Informatik, Architektur, etc.), 

Fächergruppe 3 (Naturwissenschaften und Technik mit besonderen Ausstattungserfordernissen (zB Labor, Maschinen, Kleingruppen),

Fächergruppe 4 (Humanmedizin, Zahnmedizin),

Fächergruppe 5 (Veterinärmedizin),

Fächergruppe 6 (Bildende Kunst und) 

Fächergruppe 7 (Darstellende Kunst, Musik).